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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187177">Healing Too Late</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatcrazywriterley/pseuds/thatcrazywriterley'>thatcrazywriterley</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Too Late Tales [23]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>AEW, All Elite Wrestling, Being The Elite (Web Series), Professional Wrestling, Young Bucks-Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and anxiety, Multi, Polyamorous Relationships, Polyamory, Postpartum Depression, and they are absolute troopers, brothers share a wife, nick has an emotional breakdown in front of the kids</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:09:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatcrazywriterley/pseuds/thatcrazywriterley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After coming home from the hospital from an emergency delivery and surgery, Matt and Nick have to help their wife deal with the emotional after effects.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Matt Jackson/Reader, Matt Jackson/Reader/Nick Jackson, Nick Jackson/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Too Late Tales [23]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695274</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Healing Too Late</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
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  <em>(GIF owned by superkickparty on Tumblr)</em>
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  <em>Matt</em>
</p><p>            I slipped into the bedroom, doing my best not to disturb Y/N. She was settled in the bed surrounded by pillows with everything she could want or need within reach. It had been three weeks since we’d brought her and Ty home, and she was slowly recovering. Her body had started rebounding just as it had after our other four kids, but there was something different this time. Something that worried Nick and I more than we had words to share.</p><p>            Y/N wasn’t eating like normal. She didn’t talk much, even when the kids came in to see her. Every time we brought Ty to her, she burst into tears. She held him and sobbed, and it broke our hearts.</p><p>            I sat gently down on the edge of the bed. I’d taken to checking on her every hour or so when she was asleep. The truth was that I was afraid. I was terrified. I almost lost her—<em>would have</em> if it weren’t for Nick—and I couldn’t face the prospect of losing her again.</p><p>            She turned her head as the bed dipped beneath me. Her face had a greyish tinge, and there were dark bruise-like circles beneath her eyes. It was like a punch to the chest to see her eyes so listless and empty. I ached for her, wishing I could have my wife back.</p><p>            “Is it time to feed him?” she asked flatly. Her voice was robotic and emotionless.</p><p>            “No,” I said, reaching for her hand. I squeezed her fingers and tried to smile. “I just wanted to check on you. Make sure you were okay. See if you were up for some visitors.”</p><p>            She sighed and shrugged, looking toward the door. “I guess.”</p><p>            I nodded then leaned over to press a kiss against her forehead. “I’ll send them in.”</p><p>            My wife said nothing as I slipped back out of the room and down the hall to my living room. We’d all basically moved into my house for a while. It was the place we’d brought Y/N after the hospital, and we didn’t want to move her if we could help it.</p><p>            My mother- and sister-in-law sat on the sofa, Mattie, RJ, and Lee crowded around them as Y/N’s mother held Ty. Nicole was with Nick at the dining table putting together her Lego Hogwarts train. My brother had been my rock just as I hope I’d been his. We switched off kid wrangling and caring for our wife, doing our best to keep our family together and functioning like normal. But the kids were well aware that something was wrong with Mommy. I could tell it scared them. I just wished there was a way we could make it easier for them.</p><p>            “She’s awake,” I said to her mother and sister as I crossed the room to take Ty. “Go on back.”</p><p>            “It’s going to be alright,” my mother-in-law said confidently as she handed my newborn over gently. “It takes some time, and she’s had a more difficult time than she prepared for. Have you talked to her doctor?”</p><p>            I nodded, bouncing Ty in my arms in an effort to keep him asleep. “Dr. Willis said it was postpartum. Probably made worse by the way her body’s hormones aren’t getting back to normal because of the hysterectomy. She prescribed some depression medication, but I don’t think it’s really started working yet.”</p><p>            “Give it time,” her sister said, squeezing my arm affectionately. “Keep doing what you guys are doing, don’t let her stay holed up in that room alone, make sure she takes everything the doctor gives her. She can get through this, especially with you guys behind her.”</p><p>            Without another word, they walked down the hallway and scooted into the bedroom with Y/N, shutting the door behind them.</p><p>
  <em>Nick</em>
</p><p>            I was surprised that I could focus enough to read the instructions spread out in front of me. Nicole sat on the chair next to me, building the pillars that made up Platform 9 ¾. Her face was a mask of concentration—a face that suddenly looked so much like her mother’s. I could see it in all our kids—the same nose that she had, the same curve of the eyebrows, and (<em>Thank God</em>) her hairline. Just looking at them made me realize how desperately I missed my wife.</p><p>            “Dad,” Nicole said, tapping my forearm with her palm. The look in her blue eyes made me thinks he’d said my name more than once. “I’m done with this one.”</p><p>            I smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Good job, Bug. Want to try the bridge now?”</p><p>            She took a breath far too heavy for an almost seven-year-old and looked down the hallway toward where her grandmother and aunt had disappeared. “Is Mommy going to be okay?”</p><p>            Her voice quavered and it hit me like someone had punched straight through my chest. “It’s going to take a while. And a lot of hard work and help from us, but Mommy will be okay.” I couldn’t let my daughter see how worried I was, how terrified I had been since that moment in the operating room when Dr. Willis made me make that decision. “We just have to be really patient and really easy with Mommy for a while.”</p><p>            Nicole looked back up at me, her eyes welling with tears. “Are you and Papa okay?”</p><p>            I felt more than heard the sound that ripped out of me. My daughter climbed into my lap and put her arms around my neck, squeezing me in a hug so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I clenched my teeth together, desperate to not break down at that simple, innocent question from my sweet little girl.</p><p>            “Hey, you good?” came Matt’s voice. I looked up to see worry etched in his brow. Mattie and the boys were trailing after him, Ty propped high on his shoulder.</p><p>            Mattie slipped out of line behind my brother and stopped next to me. She put her head on my shoulder and her arms around me and her sister. “It’s okay to be scared, Dad.”</p><p>            By the time I was able to wrap an arm around her, the boys and Matt had joined in. We stayed there, in a jumble of arms and legs and hugs and tears, until I realized my daughters were wiping tears off my face. They smiled at me—that same endearing, reassuring smile that their mother had—and kissed my cheeks. I hugged them even harder.</p><p>***</p><p>            Supported between my mother and my sister, I took the long walk down the hallway to the living room. They’d gotten me up, put me in the shower, and changed my clothes. I felt more human than I had in days.</p><p>            They shuffled me slowly into the living room, talking calmly the whole time. My sister squeezed my hand in tight solidarity. As soon as I walked into the room, I saw the huddle by the dining table. The kids were gathered around Nick, all of them wrapping their arms tight around him as he cried against his brother’s shoulder. Matt crouched beside him, baby Ty held firmly against his chest.</p><p>            My mother led me to the recliner and helped me sink down into it.</p><p>            “What’s wrong?” I asked numbly, looking toward the kitchen.</p><p>            “I don’t know, sweetheart,” she replied. “Rest and I’ll go see.”</p><p>            My sister sat on the floor, Oreo quickly hopping into her lap. I strained my ears for the sound of my mother’s voice. Instead, I heard Nick and Matt.</p><p>            “This is not your fault,” Matt said firmly. I could imagine that he had Nick by the back of the neck in that older-brother way of his. “You are the reason that our kids still have a mother.”</p><p>            Nick’s voice was muffled, but I could still hear the words. “I miss her,” he wailed against his brother’s shoulder. “I’m scared. This one… it’s been so hard… and it’s because of… of…”</p><p>            “Certainly not you, Nicolas Jackson,” my mother’s voice interjected. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. She’s gone through a horribly traumatic experience. An emergency C-section. Fear that there was something wrong with Ty when he wouldn’t come on time. A major surgery that she wasn’t mentally prepared for. You don’t even <em>factor</em> into this, Nick.”</p><p>            Her words were stern, but I could tell she meant them to comfort him. To prove to him that he wasn’t the reason for how I felt. I looked to my sister, feeling tears burning my eyes. The sob came out before I could stifle the noise. Nick’s name slipped out amid the cry. There was a ruckus in the dining room, and suddenly Nick came running into the living room, nearly going past me in his haste to get to me. He hit the floor, skidding across the carpet bare-kneed until he came up short at my feet.</p><p>            He wiped furiously at his bloodshot blue eyes as he reached for my hands. “Are you okay, Sunshine? What’s wrong?”</p><p>            I pulled my hands from his grasp and tugged him as close as I could, throwing my arms around his neck and holding him as tightly as my strength allowed. The sobs came again, and I clutched at him as I cried against his shoulder. He held me just as tightly, his body rigid against me.</p><p>            “I’m sorry,” I mumbled into his shirt, my fingers shaking and turning white with how hard I was holding on. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>            “For what?” he replied, his voice cracking and breaking. I felt his fingers slip into my hair as he cradled my head. “Oh, Y/N, you haven’t done anything to be sorry about. What do you need? What can I do?”</p><p>            I breathed deep of the scent of him, almost as if it were going to be the last time. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”</p><p>            Nick leaned back, even though I fought him every inch of the way, and cupped my face in his hands. His thumbs wiped away the tears on my cheeks. “Sunshine… Y/N… I’m not going anywhere. I’m never, ever going to leave you.” He leaned in and pressed his lips against mine, kissing me tenderly, desperately. “You are <em>my wife</em> and I can’t imagine life without you. I love you. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”</p><p>            I wrapped my fingers in the front of his shirt and looked around wildly, suddenly terrified that it wasn’t only Nick who would abandon me now that I was broken beyond repair. I searched for Matt, for his dark eyes and dark hair and fierce love and protection. Almost the moment I thought of him, he appeared at Nick’s back, hand settled on his younger brother’s shoulders.</p><p>            “Matt?”</p><p>            He smiled softly. “I’m not going anywhere either, Mama.” His eyes went glassy as he cried tears of his own. He squeezed Nick’s shoulders. “We need you… <em>I</em> need you. How could I ever walk away from you?”</p><p>            My chest ached. I felt wretched. “Because I’m broken. I’m not… I failed with Ty. I failed and I’m broken.”</p><p>            “Y/N,” Matt said, kneeling at my feet beside Nick. He curled one hand around the back of my head, rubbing his thumb against my hair. “You are the strongest woman… hell, the strongest <em>person</em>… I’ve ever known. No matter how scared you were, you did what you had to do to make sure we had Ty safe and healthy. You’ve supported us when we’ve been the biggest morons on the planet. I can’t imagine how you feel inside right now, but I swear to you… you are strong and brave and so full of love and fight that I will never doubt you.”</p><p>            “Do you know how lucky we are?” Nick continued, stroking my cheek. He cried harder, his fear and shame etched on his face. “How in awe we are of you every day? Y/N… I never thought… the day you told me you loved me was the start of the best years of my life. I didn’t deserve you and I didn’t have any right to want you, but you wanted me, and you loved me. And I’ve never had a single moment of doubt about you because you have a superhuman heart. You have to when it comes to loving us.”</p><p>            I drew in one heavy breath after another, looking back and forth between the two of them. I’d only ever seen them cry when our children were born. And now… here they were crying over me. I’d never doubted the sincerity of their love, but seeing the pure depth of it was breathtaking and emboldening.</p><p>            “Trust us,” Nick said, kissing my hands repeatedly. “Trust us to love you through this.”</p><p>            There was a rustle and suddenly Mattie was there, wrapping her arms around her Dad’s shoulders, her head against his back. Nicole wasn’t far behind, kneeling next to him and ducking beneath his arm. RJ and Lee came in on my sister’s hands and then wiggled into place in the space around Matt. My mother’s gentle hands placed my newborn son in my arms.</p><p>            “There’s nothing broken about you, sweetheart,” my mother said, hovering behind my husbands and children. “And even if there was, you’re looking at nine people who wouldn’t care. Who would still love you and help you put the pieces back together again.”</p><p>            I felt a smile curl my lips, even though there was still a slightly heavy weight in my chest. But for the first time since I awoke in the recovery room, I began to feel that the world wasn’t as dark as it seemed. That the men I loved and the children who I’d carried within me were not disappointed in me. Instead, they held me up and loved me, even when I couldn’t do it for myself.</p>
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